On a break from Il Volo’s hectic schedule, the 20-year-old is right at home in his native Italian province.

The Italian pop opera trio has been garnering much praise of late, not least of all from the great dame of show business, Barbra Streisand, with whom the vocal group toured last year.

“Barbra is a legend for us and for everyone in the world,” Barone said with a charming Italian accent. “Every night we were singing in front of 25,000 people. I remember the concert in Vancouver — the audience was great and everyone was so nice. We can’t wait to come back.”

Il Volo won’t be sharing the stage with anyone in Vancouver, performing in the rather smaller Orpheum Theatre for roughly a tenth of the audience that packed Rogers Arena for Streisand’s performance last fall, when Il Volo duetted with Babs on classics like Smile and Make My Garden Grow.

That isn’t to say that Il Volo won’t go for the gusto. In fact, they are shooting for big things, bringing along a 20-plus piece orchestra that will provide live string arrangements for the band’s soaring numbers.

Il Volo will be performing material from its sophomore album We Are Love, released last November.

Recorded by Grammy-winning co-producers Humberto Gatica and Tony Renis, the album contains a fair number of English songs (including a cover of U2’s Beautiful Day) and a cross-section of Italian classics and re-interpretations such as Questo Amore, Il Volo’s version of Aerosmith and Diane Warren’s disaster movie tear-jerker I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing.

“We wanted to do (a song like Beautiful Day) because it’s really famous — we think this song is untouchable,” Barone said. “We didn’t do a version like U2 did, we made it our own — more classical. Our kind of music is to do the pop songs in a classical way and the classical songs in a pop way.”

The highlight of the album is its title track, penned by Josh Groban/Celine Dion associate Mark Portmann and Latin Grammy winner Edgar Cortazar, where Il Volo sing in English, Spanish, French and Italian while backed by a Czech orchestra.

“With the first album (2010’s Il Volo, recorded at famed Abbey Road studios in London), we wanted to show the people our Italian music roots — who we are,” Barone said. “With this second album, we wanted to show our own (choice of) songs.”

Barone said the group’s favourite inspirational figures include The Three Tenors (Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras, of course), Elvis Presley and Lady Gaga, among others.

The group’s inception dates back to 2009, when all three singers took part (separately) in an Italian television opera competition, which Ginoble would go on to win.

However, during the competition, they were asked to perform Italian classic O Sole Mio as a trio, something they continued to do later on, giving themselves a variety of monikers like Tri Tenori and Il Trio before settling on Il Volo (The Flight).

Since then, the group has made a number of television appearances in North America, including Ellen, American Idol, The Tonight Show and more.

But success has also brought criticism, some of which is levelled at Il Volo by way of comparisons to other platinum-selling vocal groups like Simon Cowell’s operatic pop creation Il Divo, whose modus operandi is arguably very similar to Il Volo’s, though none of its members is Italian.

“It’s not the first time that three Italian guys sing this kind of music,” Barone said, obviously poking fun at a potential Three Tenors’ comparison at the same time. “But the difference (between Il Volo and Il Divo) is that we’re singing Italian music that was born in Italy — and we are from Italy. Our goal is to bring this music all around the world. We don’t want to be compared to the other group because we are completely different.”

Success at a young edge can also be a double-edged sword. Barely in their 20s, Il Volo’s members are coasting on solid record sales and accolades from the greats, something that can be difficult to handle for young stars.

“We love what we are doing,” Barone said. “When we sang with Barbra, when we sang at the Nobel Peace Prize (ceremony), when we sang for Billboard — it’s a great feeling. But we know how important the moment is for us, so we give it our best. We feel great, we feel glad.

“Our families are very important for us — they tell us, ‘Don’t forget where you are coming from.’ It’s important to talk to our parents every night and share our feelings and tell them our problems. There are always problems on the road, but talking with them we never feel down.”

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Il Volo earns its wings

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